Tag: workplace

What is mousing shoulder?
If you spend a lot of time at a desk using a computer, you may already be familiar with mousing shoulder, even if you don’t know what to call it. Mousing shoulder results from using a mouse on a computer held away from your body for prolonged periods, repetitively. This strain results from your muscles having to tense to hold the weight of your arm as you hold it out away from you.

The pain that results radiates down from the neck and spreads to the upper back and shoulder. You might just feel a mild ache in these areas from time-to-time. You might feel an odd sense of weakness in these areas. Maybe you’re not thinking much of it–just routine aches and pains. But is it coming from only one side of your body–the side of the arm you use to manipulate your mouse? Remember that all your muscle groups are fully connected and effect each other. When one is over-worked, the others try to compensate. This is a miracle your body performs with zero effort on your part! But the corollary of that miracle is that when there’s trouble in one area, there’s often trouble in the others.

What should I do?
If you’re in pain, go ahead and address those symptoms. Treating this kind of pain involves a number of different solutions. Go ahead and try one, see how it goes, and employ different combinations to find out what works best for you.

Stretching
There are three key stretches you can do throughout your workday to mitigate mousing shoulder. The first is the doorway stretch, demonstrated here.

The second is the tricep/lat dorsi stretch.

The third is the deltoid stretch. Both of these two are demonstrated here:

Whenever you have occasion to get up from your desk, just take a moment and do all three. Ideally, you should do these for 2-3 seconds each, 10 times a day. Not only will these stretches help reduce the pain and strain, you’ll feel more relaxed and less tense over all. You might even see a bump in your productivity.

Massage
This is exactly the kind of pain that can be relieved and healed with therapeutic massage. Massage can stop the immediate pain, but you may need more than one treatment to completely heal. Your massage therapist will be able to evaluate your particular case and recommend the best course of treatment.

Meds
If the pain is really that bad, you can take over-the-counter anti-inflammatory meds like Ibuprofen or Naproxen.

Not a cure
Where are you going? Not so fast! Stretching, pills, even massage can not cure this! These are only treatments for the pain. What you really need is to stop the repetitive motion and awkward posture that’s causing the problem. It’s time for a change.

No, don’t quit your job. There are several ways to take care of yourself and reduce the risk of mousing shoulder. The key to keep in mind is that holding your mouse out too far in front of you all day is what’s caused the problem. The solution, then is to change it up! Consider replacing your mouse with trackball or marble mouse that you can hold closer to your body. Less than 10° is ideal. You can also try switching to a wireless mouse to give you the freedom to change your position with it through the day. You might even want to try switching to your left hand for a little balance.

Exercise of your back, shoulders, and arms can also help considerably to strengthen those areas and make them more capable of handling the strain you’re putting on them each day.

Bottom line: repetition is the source of your pain with this. Do what you can to change it, or you’ll just keep treating the symptom forever.

Tom Gunn is the blog editor and marketing director for The Good Life Massage. You can hire him to help build your social media presence and develop your brand by emailing him at tomgunn@gmail.com